


Lippy Kids

by th_esaurus



Category: The Smoke (TV)
Genre: Drug Use, Dysfunctional Relationships, Fucked Up, M/M, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-03
Updated: 2019-12-03
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:35:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,919
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21662455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/th_esaurus/pseuds/th_esaurus
Summary: “People always get what’s coming to ‘em,” George told him, and it didn’t sound like a threat; it sounded reassuring.
Relationships: George "Gog" Bivin/Dennis "Asbo" Severs
Comments: 11
Kudos: 18
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	Lippy Kids

**Author's Note:**

  * For [novelized](https://archiveofourown.org/users/novelized/gifts).

> <3

It was never hard to make friends on Churchill. An insular, wartime spirit pervaded the estate, a gruff sense of community befitting its surly name: everyone knew most everyone else. Cigarettes were easily bummed, tea bags borrowed, shopping hefted up four flights of stairs when the lift was broken, which it always was. The Fenleys, who took pride in their Christmas tree every year and decorated it to the nines, let the estate’s kids come and have a gander for twenty pence a pop. The Shaheed matriarch cooked biryani for her whole floor at Eid. Every day, scooters rattled down the open-air corridors and hand-me-down trainers boomed and squeaked in flat-footed races up the echoey staircase. 

Rough, Dennis had heard people call it, in an accusatory tone of voice that he, as a nine year old kid, didn’t really understand. His mum, a paragon of optimism, said it was a lively place to live.

Dennis was a quiet boy, for the most part. Made shortbread and victoria sponge with his mum on the weekends, read his books for school, said _ morning _ and _ g’bye _ to his schoolmates but not much else. _ Dennis keeps his head down, _ his teachers often wrote, _ though he has fits of anger— _

His mother had been called into the school once or twice about those fits. It was not necessarily that Dennis was loath to mingle with the other children. More, perhaps, that they were afraid of him.

At school. On the estate. 

It was never hard to make friends on Churchill, not with a little effort. Dennis was not _ friendly _ as such.

But George, he would realise later, quite liked a bit of a challenge.

—

George’s flat was a mess of contradiction. Small, smaller even than Dennis’ own home - which seemed cavernous now without the solid, stoic presence of his father - but big enough to contain a hoard: piles of old papers and magazines, coupons roughly snipped loose, boxes full of dirty clothes, dirty shoes, dirty sheets, two huge glass jars of coppers, empty bottles on every flat surface, pizza boxes, grotty Indian takeaway tubs, ashtrays, paper plates, plastic plates, ceramic plates, four mismatched armchairs instead of a sofa, encircling a dusty TV screen buried under unreturned Blockbuster VHS boxes. But there were the nice things, too, noticeably out of place. A cut whiskey glass left by the foot of a battered coffee table. Bangles that sparkled like real gold and diamond under the hazy light bulbs. Two Playstations, one hooked up to the telly and one discarded, as though worthless. 

George noticed Dennis eyeing it up. “You want it?”

“Nah.” He was taken aback by the very suggestion, but George broke into an easy smile. Toothy. 

“It’s yours. Take it, go on.” 

George, Dennis noticed, had no attachment to the multitude of objects in his life. They came and went; stolen, sold, misplaced, broken. Dennis’ mum took good care of her nice things, carefully wiping down the vase she’d inherited from her grandmother, or having a stone replaced in her wedding ring, not an insignificant cost, despite the prolonged absence of the groom. George did not differentiate nice things from everything else.

George, maybe, did not differentiate nice people from everyone else, but Dennis hadn’t worked that out yet.

He was a kid with no dad whose new mate had given him a Playstation for free.

So.

— 

There was a flock of birds on the estate - girls of perhaps fifteen, sixteen, which, to Dennis, seemed ancient - who pulled their hair back tight and high and wore Puma tracksuits, smoked hand-rolled tobacco, painted each other’s nails in the open, blocky corridor between doors 28 and 42. Dennis was intimidated by the birds, their high pitched laughter always feeling pointed and sharp. George, he knew, was treated with little-brother affection by this teenage gaggle, as he brought them bottles of Bacardi he lifted from the corner shop across the road, stuffed up his t-shirt obviously and produced like a comedic magician - _ ta-dah! _\- while they all clapped and cooed. 

Dennis avoided them carefully. He knew his dad, before his trial, had given one of them a hard smack one night, as they blared out Misteeq across the estate from a bassy boombox. Dennis, very young, had remembered the screeching argument, the threats, his father’s deep northern brogue; sirens, silence. The birds had long memories and held grudges well.

“You can’t be scared of ‘em,” George told him. “Girls ain’t like us. They’re fickle.”

Dennis was not sure what this meant. 

“Call ‘em princess and make ‘em smile, that’s all they need,” George said. Dennis wondered whose phrase this was that George was parroting. His father - and mother - were ghosts. Sometimes they left cigarette butts freshly smudged out in the flat, but Dennis had never seen them, not once. He knew that they existed, because one day it was just him and George, and then the next there was a tiny, red-faced colicky baby screaming its new and fragile lungs out from a cot in the kitchen. For a brief moment, Dennis had wondered if the baby was another of George’s casual acquisitions, stolen on a whim. 

It wasn’t impossible, just unlikely. 

The birds disapproved of their little Georgie hanging out with the Severs kid. “Bad blood,” they yelled at him, a kind of chant. “Bad blood, bad blood!”

“Leave it out,” George shouted back. “He ain’t done nothin’ to you lot.”

The birds cooed and laughed. “You smell that?” they joked with one another. “You smell that smell? Smells like shit, Georgie—oi, Georgie, you got a piece of shit stuck to the bottom of your shoe!”

They meant Dennis, of course, and he was aware of it.

“Fuck off,” George snapped, although he liked their joke and grinned over it.

One of the girls, with dark, lidded eyes and a serious face, blew out a fog of cigarette smoke from her nostrils. “He’s good for nothin’, that one,” she said, seemingly talking to George but looking right at Dennis himself. “Just like his dad. His dad’s a murderer, y’know that?”

“He ain’t,” Dennis snapped, all of a sudden. His voice was on the verge of breaking, and sounded thin, unconvincing.

“Yeah he is,” she carried on, cold. “He’s a bastard and a murderer and you’ll be a bastard and a murderer too, y’know. It’s just bad blood.”

Dennis was never really conscious of being angry. He wasn’t, and then he was. It happened as quick as a light-switch flicks on a bulb, and he could no sooner ignore it than the light bulb could refuse electricity. 

He wanted to hit that girl. He wanted to see her mouth bleed. She couldn’t say shit about his dad. She didn’t know him. Dennis knew him, and she didn’t know, and she needed to shut her stupid fucking mouth right now, and he was going to shut it with his knuckles.

But before he could rush her, he felt a tight, thick warmth around his neck. Restricting but not throttling him, holding him in place even as his heavy feet tried to shuffle forward on the concrete. George was no bigger than him, scrappier, without Dennis’ lingering puppy fat, but his arm under Dennis’ chin was surprisingly strong. His other hand on Dennis’ stomach like a barrier. 

“S’not worth it,” George muttered, ever so close to his ear. 

“She can’t talk about my dad like that,” Dennis hissed. 

“People always get what’s coming to ‘em,” George told him, and it didn’t sound like a threat; it sounded reassuring. 

The birds were cackling fit to burst at this intimate little scuffle. Dennis felt like George was pulling all his anger out through the palm on his belly; storing it in his pocket for later. 

“Forget them,” George cooed. “Fifa?”

Dennis mumbled his assent, and immediately missed George’s fast grip on his neck as he slid his arm loose. But he didn’t disengage entirely. Left his arm draped around Dennis’ hunched shoulders.

They played video games in George’s dingy flat, and two weeks later, Dennis’ mother gossiped to him idly as they washed and dried the dishes in tandem, that one of those noisy girls from the next floor up had gone to hospital. “Had to have her stomach pumped,” she tutted, shaking her head mildly. “We all suspect it’s drugs, not that you’d know anything about that, love. Her mam swears blind she was _ poisoned_, of all things. Bleach in a Bacardi bottle. What absolute nonsense.”

What absolute nonsense, she said.

—

George’s baby sister grew a few years older, and Dennis still never saw George’s parents. Little Emily could not say her brother’s name quite yet, and settled on calling him _ Gog, _ a barking laugh of a noise _ . _It suited him, and so it stuck.

—

Three miles out from the estate there was a grotty stretch of riverbank, untouched by well-meaning conservationists and left to ebb with refuse, deformed wire baskets from the local Sainsbury’s, dead rats and burnt plastic. It was a bit of a trek but George often stuffed Dennis’ backpack with a 12-pack of crisps and beer he was meant to be looking after for his father, and wheedled him along for the hike. 

They were fourteen now. Old enough to drink, to smoke. Old enough for George to lick two Rizlas and stick them together, carefully tapping weed onto it out of a black plastic pot that had once housed photo negatives, holiday snapshots of a family neither of them ever knew. He rolled the spliff and lit it, blowing smoke into Dennis’ face and laughing; they shared it after that, though. 

They’d stamp down the overgrown grass on the soilly edge of the riverbank, where the debris wasn’t too built up, and sit and smoke and drink and talk; no adults to chide or kids to heckle. None of George’s other boys, mates and strays he adopted from around the estate to delegate his petty thievery to or employ as messengers. 

This was the way Dennis liked it best. Just him and George against the world. 

“I can’t be bothered with school anymore,” George told him once.

“Yeah, what a fuckin’ nightmare.”

“I think I’ll quit it,” George said loftily.

Dennis laughed freely. “If only.”

George took a deep inhale of the spliff and held it in for five seconds, ten seconds. He swallowed thickly. “You say that like I can’t.”

“I mean, we’re stuck there two more years.”

“Says who?”

“Says—” Dennis shrugged. Sometimes George asked him questions in a tone of voice that implied the answer was obvious. “School, I guess.”

“Why on earth would I have to listen to what _ school _ says if I quit school?”

Dennis couldn’t really argue with that logic. He did not see too much of George at school, because he’d started boxing at lunchtimes, and George was taught in classes for problem children and slow learners. Idiots and psychos, George always said. Not the kind of company _ he _ was meant to be keeping. 

“You should think about it.”

“What?”

“Packin’ it in,” George said, rolling his eyes. “We could make a good go of it.”

Dennis did not know what _ it _ was, but immediately he wanted it. Him and George; mates, cohorts, business partners. 

As if there was any _ business _ on the estate apart from drug running and hawking knock-off Rolex watches. Churchill was insular; Churchill liked to turn a blind eye.

Suddenly, George stood up, quick as a bullet. “Look,” he barked, pointing.

All Dennis could see was a scummy patch of discoloured water bobbing at the edge of the brown river. George kicked his thigh until he clambered up too. “_Look_,” he said again.

They tiptoed closer to the water, careful not to slip on the sludgy mud. Then Dennis saw it: a cloud of frog spawn, gelatinous and bubbling, just under the water’s oily surface. “Little fuckers,” George said, delighted. They leaned in close, and Dennis could see that they weren’t just inert little balls, black dots at rest in their hazy cocoons, but a wriggling tempest about to explode, each tadpole already vibrating with energy, tiny tails quivering and dancing. 

He laughed aloud, open-mouthed. How could anything thrive in a dump like this? But he loved that it did anyway.

George did not move quickly, but it seemed to happen very fast, before Dennis could react. He leant down, holding onto Dennis’ shoulder for ballast, and picked up a single, jellyish little ball, one single wiggly tadpole. He rolled it carefully into the palm of his hand, cupped slightly so it wouldn’t veer off the side, and held it just below their faces. Dennis held his breath, not wanting to jostle such a delicate thing. They watched it for a moment, curious. 

And then in a split-second of unexpected movement, George slammed his other hand down onto his palm, squashing the tadpole in an instant. 

Dennis reeled back in shock. George was laughing so hard he was almost choking. He wiped his hand on the long grass, groaning out an exaggerated noise of disgust, and then he pushed Dennis right out of the way, jumped down into the water’s lapping edge, and smashed his foot down on the entire cluster of frogspawn. He was so violent that the mud and mess of the water churned up into a retching brown bog.

There was nothing left to see once George was done. 

He stood tall in the water as it stained his white trainers, the ankles of his jeans, staring at Dennis but not quite seeing him.

Then his expression went all of a sudden lax. Almost bored. 

“Come on,” he snapped. “Get another beer open, will you?”

As though Dennis should’ve done it already. As though Dennis should’ve known. 

—

Dennis’ mum tried her best with his chosen company. She was pleased, or perhaps relieved, that her son had finally latched onto a friend after years of loneliness. With his father in jail, she bore the brunt of his shrieking tantrums - fits that lasted well into teenagehood - and for the longest time there was no schoolmate’s house or girlfriend’s flat she could ship Dennis off to when he became too much. But as soon as he and George became bosom pals, she almost missed him getting constantly under her feet. There had been no announcement, no introduction, just—

“Going to Gog’s.”

“What sort of a name is _ Gog?_”

“Dunno. His name.”

And then he was out the door. Left early, came back late, slipping his shoes off by the front door and creeping into his bedroom. It never bothered his mum, not even when he was little. There were bad patches on the estate but she assumed her Dennis - and his newfound friend - steered well clear.

She assumed a lot about George, before she met him. 

And even after, disquieted by his placid tone of voice and fixed smile and his eyes that kept you pinned while you were looking at him but, as soon as you glanced away, darted from side to side and up and down and all around as though sizing up every inch of his surroundings, scoping every exit, casing anything to rob; even after she met him, she did her best to welcome him into their lives. Dennis needed friendship, desperately, and she told herself firmly that doubtful company was far better for him than none. 

When the lads were fifteen, she invited him along to their summer holiday - not a yearly thing, too pricey to afford that, but she tried to take Dennis out of the city every couple of years. Centre Parcs, she told him. “Ask your mum first,” she chided.

“I will,” George replied, always as though he were talking to someone else in the room, invisible. “Sounds lush, Mrs S.”

The boys were rowdy in the back of the car as they merged onto the M25. She could hear Dennis’ laughing little yelps as George pinched and poked him, but it seemed like they were having fun, so she let it slide. They were quiet for the last hour of the drive. The roads got smaller and more windy as they neared Woburn, so she couldn’t check up on them as much in the rear view mirror, but she assumed—

Assumed they had just settled down. 

She stopped at a Spar to stock up just before they arrived. Treated herself to a bottle of Bailey’s along with the usual bread and bits for sandwiches, Coke for the boys, a bag of apples - optimistic, she thought to herself - and a few fun-size Snickers bars. Dennis was ever so quiet on the last stretch of the journey. Tired, she thought. It was getting late.

She always booked the littlest cabin, used to just herself and Dennis. “You can kip on the sofa if you like, George, or bunk up with Dennis—”

“I’ll share with Den, Mrs S. Like a sleepover, innit?”

“Alright with you, Dennis?” she asked lightly.

He half nodded, half shrugged. 

It was a nice bit of time off. A few days in the countryside always seemed to do Dennis good: fresh air, open spaces, plenty he could do to burn his energy. He and George chased each other on wobbly bikes through the trees while she sipped a cup of tea on the porch, her feet in slippers and crossed at the ankle, smiling at the boys whooping and hollering, though she wished they’d swear a little less loudly. This was polite company out here, not the devil-may-care corridors of the estate. George was, for once, twinkly eyed at the prospect of the archery range, and they spent two hours down there shooting targets. He turned out to be a fast learner, though Dennis wasn’t bad at all, and the healthy competition seemed to do both of them good.

This had been a good idea, Dennis’ mother thought, pleased with herself.

She booked herself in for a facial one evening. “Entertain yourself for a few hours, boys,” she told them.

It wasn’t half lovely, to be pampered for a bit. Like you were the only person in the world. She’d been through her fair share of troubles these past years, what with her husband, the arrests, the shame of court and all that, to say nothing of Dennis taking ever such a long time to grow out of his difficult childhood. She deserved this. A bit of bloody luxury.

It was darkening by the time she meandered back to the cabin. She hardly expected the boys to be asleep, but figured they’d be slobbed out in front of the telly, having discovered one of those fancy channels full of films she and Dennis didn’t get at home. Raiding the choccy bars, she supposed. She was in a buoyant mood, and willing to forgive them a little mess, if they’d made it.

When she opened the door, the first thing she noticed was the tang of whiskey. Not just an open bottle, but like it had been long ago spilled, seeping into the carpet. She spotted it then, the Bailey’s she’d barely touched, cap off, on its side, leaking out all over the soft furnishing. Maybe a third of the bottle spilt. The rest had been drunk.

The boys were on the floor. The coffee table, sturdy oak, tipped on its side and crashed into the glass case covering the fireplace. It had shattered, mostly spilling into the fake wood, little glittery flecks of glass on the stone. It looked like they had fought, and were still fighting.

All this took a second to take in, and in another second, she registered what she was seeing: Dennis pinned on his back under George’s wrists and knees. His friend, his mate, leaning over him, leering, wide-eyed and drunk - both of them drunk, clearly, on that much unfettered liquor - and she could not quite parse what they were doing at first, until she saw the string of spittle oozing down from George’s mouth, catching the light, and then snapping, dripping suddenly, into Dennis’ tentatively open lips.

He was spitting in her son’s mouth.

“_You—_” was all she managed to utter. 

“Alright, Mrs S?” George said mildly, not even leaping up as though caught, just pushing down on Dennis’ chest to help himself stand and then offering his palm, pulling Dennis up too, easy as you like. “You’re glowing, Mrs S, fancy, never seen you look so—”

“Shut the fuck up, Gog,” Dennis muttered. 

“What on _ earth _ have you boys been up to?”

“Just having a lark,” George said, still not at all fussed or flustered. Dennis scrubbed his mouth with the back of his sleeve, his cheeks blotchy pink. Had she really seen—

What had she seen?

“Got a bit carried away with your booze,” George laughed, like this was all a joke.

“So I can bloody see. You know I have to pay a deposit on this place, young man? They won’t take kindly to that muck on the sofa!”

They were just drunk boys roughhousing. That’s all she’d seen. Surely, she thought. Nothing more than a tussle on the floor, not expecting to be interrupted. She could chastise them for the drink, for the mess, for the disrespect, but anything else—

There hadn’t been anything else.

Surely. 

—

Everyone made assumptions about George, Dennis thought, because he couldn’t possibly—

—

Nonetheless, George was not invited on any further trips. He didn’t seem to care, never bristled about being left out. As though it had never happened at all. 

—

They had been drinking. That was hardly unusual but it was a celebration, today. George’s second stint in juvie was done with now, and he’d made straight for Dennis’ flat, checked nobody else was home, and announced that he was gagging for a drop, be a good boy wouldya Den and fetch us a drink?

It took a good few cans of lager for Dennis to feel buzzed these days. He didn’t much like the taste of it, but he and George always liked to race each other, starting with an unopened can in their hands and counting down - _ 3, 2, 1 - _then chugging back the cheap booze until one of them choked or spit up; the loser. It wasn’t always Dennis, but they tended to end up more drunk on the days when George lost. 

They smoked, too. Not technically old enough to buy their own cigarettes yet, but everyone knew that one of the girls from the ground floor worked her dad’s corner shop on weekends, and would sell 20 packs of Windsor Blues to anyone who asked.

It was a cold end to autumn, but they’d flung the window wide to mitigate the smell. Dennis’ duvet wrapped around their shoulders to keep out the worst of the chill, an ashtray between them on the bed, backs against the wall. George told his juvie stories like Dennis’ old Grandad used to tell tales of the war: with a weird sense of pride. “You can’t beat it for the networks,” George said, exhaling a snort of smoke through his nose casually. “Met two guys already, class guys, who wanna work with me once they’re out. I make a good impression, y’know.”

“Work with you?”

George had long ago stopped rolling his eyes at Dennis; now he let his attitude voice when he thought Dennis was being a fucking idiot. “Juice, mostly. MDMA when they’ve got it. The boys have got clients lined up for the stuff already.”

It was dealing that George had been arrested for, though he managed to wheedle his way down to a possession charge. Nobody could prove he sold it. Even Dennis had never seen money actively change hands, and George had never invited him to get involved. This rankled a little. Dennis didn’t know whether he was considered untrustworthy, or unreliable, or just unworthy. Maybe because George had offered him an acid trip once and Dennis, thinking George would push harder, just said, “Nah, you’re alright.”

George did not push, and Dennis regretted his casual rebuff. He felt, in the moment, like George’s opinion of him palpably dipped.

It was a terrifying feeling. 

So he procured beer and cigarettes for George’s release, bought kebabs with money he palmed from his mum’s purse, and told her to have a nice night out at the flicks with her girlfriends, see that new Brad Pitt film, take it easy. Kissed her cheek.

He offered his bedroom as a hangout space more and more these days, because George had acquired a stocky little pitbull, a bitch that he had no desire to train, and Dennis did not like being in the flat with her, among the hoarded mess where he couldn’t always keep an eye on her. George let her clamp her mouth carefully onto his arm and wriggled it around, laughing as she flailed like an extended limb, and always wanted Dennis to give it a go. He was wary about saying no to George now, but the dog’s spit-covered teeth were impetus enough. 

Dennis tried to chain a second cigarette off the stub of his first, swore when it didn’t catch, and let George lean over and light it properly for him. His heart always gave a great, painful thud when George got close like that. When George flicked his ears or ruffled his hair or pulled him into a choke hold that lasted a second too long; when George grabbed his jaw with both hands and said something like _ let me just look at you, Dennis_; when George asked, off-handed and almost bored, if he could spit in Dennis’ mouth and Dennis didn’t question why, just said, _ guess so_.

A punch of a heartbeat to remind him that George made him feel like nobody else did or could or would. 

George leaned back, thoughtful. He played his fingers through the lighter’s feeble flame, darting them back and forth over the tip of the heat. 

“I should burn off my fingerprints,” he said casually. Dennis stared. “So I won’t get caught next time.”

“You love getting caught.”

“Won’t be so cushty when I hit eighteen though, will it?”

Dennis shrugged. He had considered it too. How many chances George would get once he was an adult in the eyes of the law. 

“So let’s test the theory,” George said, and without warning, he grappled Dennis against the mattress, pushing his head down into the bundled duvet so hard he could barely breathe. Dennis felt George’s full weight settle on his back, George’s knees squeezing under his armpits until he yelped, too ticklish. “Turn over, knob-end,” George barked at him, hefting up so Dennis could wriggle over onto his back. 

George really was sat high up on his chest. His crotch, the tight wide stretch of his jeans, a few inches from Dennis’ chin. 

“Give us your hand,” he said, commanding. 

Dennis gave it.

He couldn’t recall ever once asking George _ why? _

George was very methodical, his eyes wide and unblinking. He held Dennis’ hand tightly, his thumb pressing into the softest part of his palm. In his other hand, he had the lighter. Flicked it on once, off. On again, off. Then he grinned, almost giggling, and dashed the flame across Dennis’ fingertip. Just his index finger. Fast enough that it only felt like a glancing warmth. Not even unpleasant. 

He didn’t get a second warning. 

George’s grip on his hand was impossibly tight. He pushed Dennis’ finger into the flame and held it there, pressed down on him while he struggled; held it there, kept holding it there. 

The pain took a split-second to register, and then it was searing. Dennis felt like a screw had been driven an inch down straight into his fingertip. His blood was boiling under the skin, virulent bubbling, a white pain that was both numbing and agonising. He was yelling, he knew he was yelling, but he didn’t know what, and bucking frantically while George laughed and laughed and laughed above him. 

The flame wasn’t even touching his skin anymore, but two fat tears eked out of Dennis’ left eye. “Fuck,” he was sobbing, “fuck, fuck, Gog, fuck—”

“You crybaby,” George tutted, and then at once he leaned forward and put Dennis’ throbbing finger right into his mouth. His tongue felt as rough as a cat’s against the burnt skin, but George suckled until his mouth was wet all over inside with spit, swilling it against Dennis’ fingertip. He closed his eyes while he sucked. 

Dennis needed water, craved ice, but he didn’t dare move. 

“Better?” George mumbled around his finger. _ Beh-uh? _

Dennis was crying in earnest now, though silently. George, still straddling him, still sucking, ran his fingers through Dennis’ cropped hair, soothing.

It wasn’t that George felt bad, Dennis thought later. Just that he liked being both burn and balm. 

—

Dennis had to keep a glass of cold water next to him all night, to dip his sore finger in when the pain bubbled through afresh. “Show us it in a couple of days, will you?” George asked him, casual again. “See if your fingerprint is totally fucked or if it needs another go.”

—

Dennis never found it easy to make friends, even in the potted community that Churchill afforded; so when a hand was outstretched to him, as a child, he was quietly thrilled to take it.

He wondered now, with George’s unrelenting grip still holding him fast, if that might have been a mistake.


End file.
